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Do you think much about your choice of terms, the language you use? How these influence the ways you think? How the ways you think influences your worldview and the choices available to you? How this leads to the behaviors you choose (consciously or unconsciously)?
Linguists have long argued about whether language “causes” us to think in certain ways. Lera Boroditsky (University of California San Diego, formerly of Stanford) has been conducting research for several years on questions such as these. You can find articles by and...

This month I travelled to Finland for a conference on Culture, Values, and Justice. An interesting group of scholars attended who were exploring the many aspects, interrelationships, and applications of ideas that comprise these three areas. To me, these three subjects and their interrelationships suggest three questions that define the nature of being human. Who are we? What do we hold as important? How do we participate in our relationships in a way that upholds our humanness? These are not questions that are easy to...

Summer is approaching, my backyard has come to life with the lush greenery of late Spring in northeast Ohio, our youngest daughter just graduated high school, and as I take a moment to reflect, interrupting my accustomed pattern of research, gardening, and violin practice, it suddenly occurs to me: By this time next week I will be in Milan with my family beginning a long anticipated three-week journey through Bella Italia.
Having spent the past few months with my nose in the books, exploring various theoretical constructs and...

My most recent professional experiences have brought me back to think about evolving education. In my previous blog I shared a little bit of the journey that has taken me to this moment. By evolving education I mean both integrating learning into life as well as designing new learing systems. Both are necessary. The first is about supporting a culture that embraces our growth and personal development as an ongoing lifelong process. Such a culture will recognize that as human beings we are always expanding and that in our life time we go...

Is risk encouraged or discouraged in your organization? What happens when someone makes a mistake?
When I talk with a potential client with regard to his or her organization, these are questions I like to ask because they provide me with an indication of just how much of a learning organization it may or may not be. Peter M. Senge describes this concept in great detail in his book, “The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization.”
So much of organizational health is determined by how these two questions...